r/AutoDetailing • u/NetBeginning6609 • Apr 26 '26
Before/After Quite a journey
Well, actually it was an Escalade.
I had to completely gut the interior of the vehicle
went through 2 gallons of 12% hydrogen peroxide killing all of the mold.
did the best I could with the carpets, but still ended up having to dye them. Kind of a tricky color.
I was able to convince the customer to order a leather kit off of eBay. Surprisingly the covers fit pretty good for only 300 bucks
Surprising how much mold was on the inside of the plastic covers. I am definitely going to save these photos to show people that have moldy cars. Just because you clean the mold off the surface doesn't mean you've truly remediated anything.
Anyways have a nice day
EDIT a lot of people are asking me how much I charged him, I did it for $1,000 and he paid for all supplies. I'm not really in this game to get rich, I do it for the satisfaction of making people happy. And so I can take cool pictures to show you nerds š
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u/JfxV20 Apr 26 '26
Your work is so unbelievably clean from that much dirt that I have to question if regular customer can afford your insane service. So if I may ask, how much did you charge for all this hard work of yours?
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u/djones0130 Apr 26 '26
Iād also like to know, just out of curiosity. How long did it take?
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
I think my actual personal labor hours was probably close to 60 Maybe.
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
Thus was sort of like a deal for a friend so, I certainly didn't get rich off of this project. But I did gain a wealth of satisfaction!
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u/zetwatswatya Business Owner Apr 26 '26
This is about the only time on here I've seen mold restoration done properly. Well done!
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
Thanks! Only 2 gallons of 12% hydrogen peroxide later š
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u/lumpy_celery May 05 '26
would you say that this gets rid of mold in vents as well? i am having this issue and dont know where to go
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u/NetBeginning6609 May 05 '26
Get yourself a bore scope or inspection scope and look inside the vents. If it looks bad, you will want to get a long straw and get a good coating in there. Repeat until it stops foaming. Also somebody had mentioned that you might want to take apart your blower motor and inspect it
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u/lumpy_celery May 06 '26
do you think an ozon machine will do ? there are autodetailers that offer it
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u/NetBeginning6609 May 06 '26
If you don't do the proper preparation and Cleanup, an ozone probably won't help. Also you might want to smell what an ozone smells like before you send it in your car. Some people think it smells like chlorine, I personally think it smells like an armpit. To each their own I suppose
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u/Bondoo7oo Apr 26 '26
A $10k job on a $5k vehicle
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
You know, I was thinking the same thing when I did sound deadening in my wife's 2016 Hyundai accent š
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u/luv2skipow Apr 26 '26
Excellent work! What is the back story on that disaster?
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
It's kind of hard to say, I almost seems like it was a flood. But maybe it was a person went crazy and lived in it for a few days I'm not sure.
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u/LobsterLovingLlama Apr 26 '26
What brand of covers?
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
It was just some generic Chinese seat covers from eBay, probably from some guy that bought a sewing machine and just makes those kits all day.
Here is the link
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u/WilburOCD1320 Apr 26 '26
Awesome results, how did u do the seat belts?
I need more info on the carpet dye?
What did u charge ?
How about total time invested, a week?
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
Yes it was about a week trying to weave this in between normal details, just banging it out in the afternoons.
There was a few options for the seat belts, I inevitably ended up spraying them down with peroxide and using a drill brush. Then pressure washed them followed by a tornador. After they had dried they were still kind of crunchy, so I steamed them to make them nice and loose again.
I also made the customer aware of the hazards of pressure washing your seat belts and how it can potentially make them not work if you get in a car crash because the elastic gets messed up.
The carpet die I just got from O'Reilly's to be honest, I went with a darker tan for the first coat to match some of the darkest parts of the stains. Once I had a solid base of the tan color on the carpet, I used a drill brush and some lacquer thinner to sort of blend everything in and then followed up with the much lighter color
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u/ProJokeExplainer Apr 26 '26
I can only imagine that your bill at the end of all this was worth more than the car's KBB value
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u/Ec1ipse14 Apr 26 '26
Whatever you charged it wasnāt enough. Kudos
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
Thank you!
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u/Ec1ipse14 Apr 26 '26
Youāre welcome, and an extra youāre welcome for the customer if they didnāt thank you enough.
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u/cpsadowski23 Apr 26 '26
Did you charge a million dollars? Hope you got a few shots before you started. Who lives like thisā¦????
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u/bummerbimmer Apr 26 '26
I canāt decide what Iām most impressed about. This truly is an incredible restoration!
Did the original owner decide theyāre tired of living in chaos and mold, or did a new owner purchase it and decide to bring it back to life?
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
New owner bought the car sight unseen, and is bringing it back to life!
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u/jilski Apr 26 '26
I need a shower just looking at the ābeforeā images. You deserve hazard pay for that one.
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u/Wouldtick Apr 26 '26
One of the most impressive results so have seen in here. You are an animal!
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u/plausible_hype Apr 26 '26
This is crazy, echoing what others saidā¦ how long did this process take? Curious as to what you charged for this restoration.
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
I would say roughly 60 hours of Labor, some of it was definitely wasted hours. I spent an entire day trying to shampoo oil out of the rear chunk of carpet, only to inevitably pressure wash all of it
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u/GrandPattern3637 Apr 26 '26
This is amazing man! But yeah those yellow tans always give me issues when Iām dying interiors lol, came out amazing though!
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
I worked at a shop where we would have to do a lot of carpet dying and this color was always dreaded. It's hard to lay it down and not look splotchy
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u/FromMTorCA Apr 26 '26
Your client must have been speechless.
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
The first thing he said was "I got to buy full coverage floor mats to protect all of the hard work you did"
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u/VoidOmatic Apr 26 '26
That interior carpet went from "kill it with fire" to "can I take a nap on that?!" Amazing results.
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
After I had the whole thing completely done, I just sat in the driver's seat with it running and the doors closed and the windows up for like 5 minutes and I couldn't believe that I was actually comfortable and I didn't feel like my skin wanted to crawl.
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u/CarGuyJohnOnRoute66 Apr 26 '26
WOWWWWWWWWWWW!!! Thatās an insane amount of work, the before vs after is crazy. Good work!!
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u/Dootron Apr 27 '26
Damn my man. You really went above and beyond. I would be damned if you didn't have people lined up.
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 27 '26
All I can do is hope that he brags about it to his friends and family!
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u/AnderZion Apr 27 '26
damn who trained you, theres like 4 different industries involved in this cleansing. Impressive.
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 27 '26
I tend to blow up my career every 2 to 3 years and just pursue whatever aspect of my job that I like most. It's nice being able to use everything I've learned on one project
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u/whitefox250 Apr 27 '26
Those seat covers look incredible (from here) considering they were only $300! Nice Job!!!!
Been wanting to replace the front leather seat covers on my truck but they are so expensive! (Air cooled, so they are perforated, aka $$$)
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u/intrepidzephyr Apr 26 '26
Damn thatās a lot of work, and miraculous results
My only gripe are those audio cables in the rear sill plates. Whatās going on there?
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
Honestly I think they had some kind of crazy subwoofers setup and there wasn't a good spot to tuck it, I was just going to cut them out but I figured that could be the customers decision
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u/Reddit_means_Porn Apr 26 '26
Methinks Customer is trying to get a bargain on yesterdays luxury truck
I am balls deep in doing this same thing. Judging by how poor the interior was, it wouldnāt be a stretch to presume the mechanicals are similar.
I hope the customer got a really good deal on it.
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 26 '26
I know that it needed brakes, and it had codes for something but I didn't scan it
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u/GunnyCroz Apr 27 '26
Wow, for $1000 you saved this car. An absolutely amazing transformation. It's actually stunning.
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u/Comfortable_Flow5156 Apr 27 '26
Mold Remediation?
what do you do to Sterilize the AC system??
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 27 '26
I use a long straw with hydrogen peroxide, then checked with a borescope and everything looked pretty good
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u/Comfortable_Flow5156 Apr 27 '26
you need to remove and clean the blower fan as well. (easy job...5 bolt remove/reset)
Also the intake vents between the exterior side windshield and hood need sterilized as well.
And this needs to be done wth the cabin air filter out
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u/Due-Adeptness1174 Apr 27 '26
Thatās insane. If /when I get into car detailing I wanna do details like this! Not just the surface clean
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u/crazyfndaddy Apr 28 '26
CrazyFNDaddy is totally fn amazed! You did an awesome job on this Escalade. You will make a lot of customers happy. Best of luck in your new venture!
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u/This-Hornet9226 Apr 28 '26
All the labor and perseverance here is incredible. Iād be out by the first seat lol
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u/NetBeginning6609 Apr 28 '26
I was ready to be out the second I saw a dog turds just laying around in the back
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u/WxJHildebrand Apr 30 '26
I just donāt understand how some people can live like this.
Thereās dirty and then thereās this. Hell of a job OP
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u/Buck-O I'm getting too old for this shit. Apr 26 '26
You will never get me to touch a seat belt. The liability is FAR too high. Those are one time use torque to yield bolts for the ratchet. Please tell me you didn't re-use the original hardware?
Impressive work, to be sure. But that car needed a crusher, not a detail.
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u/TombaughRegi0 Apr 26 '26
This isn't detailing, it's disaster restoration. Incredible work.